Christmas Time

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Team Viewer and Logmein are two of the many programs out there that will let you remotely access your computer while your away from home. Some might ask why you would want to do this. For me, its my way to provide support for my family since I moved so far away and since I've started my new job, it is the way I support remote users all over the country. Lets not mention its a great way to get some stuff done on your personal machines when you have the occasional downtime at work.

I started this blog article way back when Logmein was free and easily the best option out there for daily use. You could have as many linked computers in your account as possible. Then they cut it off the unlimited access down to just 10 computers. I was easily able to handle almost all of my computers as well as my relatives computer. This was the program I lived in for years. Sometime late last year, they finally closed down the free portion and made option a pay only option. However they basically cut off the free option in one day and gave the users a 1 free week trial. It wasn't a very nice thing to do but that's how it goes.

I had used programs like Join.me which is great but isnt the same as Logmein. (Logmein owns Join.me) I had also used Team Viewer for the occasionally trouble shooting issue for the remote users I had. The whole 2 of them. So of course I remembered that and loaded two test computers. While you cant mistake the difference between Team Viewer and Logmein, they basically provided the same functionality accept Team Viewer is free. (For Now) Both support clients. Both support multiple computers. They both support multiple passwords needed to login, just incase some accesses the program, they would still need a pass to the computer they are trying to login at to access it. One noticeable difference is that Team Viewer supports sound, (atleast on PC not sure of mac) and Logmein does not.

Obviously the big difference between the two is price. Team Viewer is free (for now) and Logmein has a yearly fee. If Logmein offered a reasonable lifetime price, I would have probably paid it. That being said, when I arrived to my new company, I was very happy to see they used Logmein to support all the remote branches. It makes life very easy to support the users with there various questions. Team Viewer does support a corporate pay version. I'm sure that would be great as well, but because I enjoy the Logmein interface just a little more I would have to recommend Logmein if price wasnt an issue and you have a lot of users to support.

That being said, FREE is better especially in this instance, check out Team Viewer if your like me, the remote IT support for your friends and family or in a pinch and need to support a user who cant get Join.me or Logmein to work.